"Office Space" scenarios

[seattleotaku.livejournal.com]

Abnormal people call for abnormal reasons. Here are just a few of today's choice abnormals, and I'm only halfway done yet.

Scene I: ( I'm calling you because your number is disconnected. )

Scene II: ( People can't email me when there's a typo in the address. )

Scene III: ( Because we love it when people don't follow instructions. )

the whole intarwebs

[anivair.livejournal.com]

The employees here are always joking that I must be downloading hte whole internet, since I regularly take up huge ammounts of bandwidth getting OS's and patched, programs and the like. I'm sure some of you out there get the same thing.

So I wonder how long it would take to download the whole internet. Assume a T1 connection (because to do otherwise would be painful). Anyone have an estimate? I'll bet there's data on this somewhere. And I'd like to be able to throw a figure back at them. For example, "Yes. I'm downloading the WHOLE INTERNET. I should be done by May r3d of next year."

I want a new laptop, kthx.

[kizayaen.livejournal.com]

When one of our clients has hardware trouble on a company laptop, our policy is to ship them a new shell... which is basically a full laptop except the hard drive. They get a sheet of instructions which walks them through transferring the HD, and then they return the old shell to us for repairs.

My last call:

Me: "Thank you for calling $helpdesk at $company. My name is Kiz. May I have your $ID_number?"

Rep: "$ID_number"

Me: "$rep_name? Okay, what can I do for you?"

Rep: "I need a new laptop shell.

Now, at this point, some of you will know that I'm already pissed off. I'm the tech here, not you. I determine whether you need... or get... a new shell, not you.

Me: "... what's the problem you're having?"

Rep: "My computer is going slow."

Now, completely ASIDE from the fact that no rep will EVER be happy with the speed of their machine, a shell replacement is not gonna do jack shit for laptop speed.

I ended up walking him through a defrag and then telling him to use it for a couple days and call back if he doesn't notice an improvement. I think that's going to be my SOP now for calls I don't want to deal with. Defrag, call back if no improvement is seen.

In less happy news, our desk manager quit around a week ago, and we just got the announcement with who the new manager is. This would be the person who:

• My wife already worked for once;
  
• Treats people like misbehaving teenagers instead of like adults;
  
• Tells people they're doing something wrong. When they ask how she wants it done, she writes them up for being sarcastic and disrespectful;
  
• Inserts notes into cases that've already been escalated past us to the client's internal helpdesks. The notes instruct us to try stuff that we already know doesn't work, and often has no relevance whatsoever to the initial problem. She has absolutely no grasp of technical issues;
  
• Clings with a deathgrip to everything the client tells her. "They said X would work, so if it doesn't, you must be doing it wrong. Go back and do it right this time."

My time between calls tonight, I believe, will be spent on monster.com.

[EDIT] So many appropriate 4chan memes have come to mind.

"IN BEFORE HELPDESK IMPLODE"
"DO NOT WANT"
"LOLI HAET MANAGER"
"EMPLOYEE GO WHERE?"
"GB2/HR/"

A/B ethernet switch of Hell

[jayrtfm.livejournal.com]

I'm a tech in a public high school, my desk is in the Macintosh Media lab classroom, which also has 2 teachers. One has a couple of classes in the room, the other is the art and technology teacher. Basically I'm literally trapped between two pre-menopausal women. ( Read more... )